Age has never really mattered to me, except the last 2 years of high school.
This is when something happened that propelled me overnight from a gawky theater geek with a terrible personality to the most in-demand invitee to every party.
I wish I could say this was due to my charm, intelligence, humor, or even my staggeringly high tolerance for booze.
But it wasn't.
I had a fake I.D.
You see, back then, before Al Gore invented the internet, fake I.D.s were exceedingly difficult to get and highly coveted.
It all started when somehow, the summer before I turned 15, I got hired for a part-time job at THE coolest store in the mall, The Limited. I wasn't exactly a fashion plate at the time, so they must have been really desperate. One of the managers was a stunning, intimidating and extraordinarily unpleasant girl named Hope. She ignored me completely until one night after work I was mistakenly invited to join the girls for drinks. Everyone else stumbled out after a few hours, until only Hope and I were left. We closed the place, and once she realized I could guzzle 30 beers without vomiting, she began inviting me to get wasted with her after work every night.
Hope was an ancient 21 or 22 years old, a little over 5 inches tall, with enormous boobs and long glossy black hair. She knew every bartender and bouncer at every bar and dance club. Even though her personality was actually just shy of unbearable, after an eighth vodka tonic her habit of loudly making fun of everyone's slightest physical defects was roll-on-the-floor funny.
One night, we spent hours at her place dressing up to hit a newly opened dance club that Hope had talked non-stop about for a week (in between making fun of fat people at the mall on our cigarette break.) By this time, she'd given me an unsuccessful Madonna makeover. (Picture the "Lucky Star" look as worn by Bea Arthur.) We got drunk in her car, put on more wet-n-wild liner, teased the shit out of our bangs, straightened our 7 thousand black rubber bracelets and triumphantly walked to the club. We knew were THE SHIT.
Except, I didn't get in.
I guess this was one bouncer Hope hadn't fucked yet.
She wanted to go in anyway, but we were in the middle of the desolate warehouse district and I had no other way of getting home. So she told me to sit in her Beemer and wait for her.
"But Hope" I tried not to whine "I gotta pee so bad!"
"Ugh. FINE."
She stormed back her car & silently dove me home, her lips white with fury.
The next day at work, Hope seemed over it, and was her usual hideous self. At the end of the day she gave us all our paychecks.
Later, I opened the envelope and saw that right there, cozily snuggling with my paycheck, was very realistic-looking ID. The name and descriptions were clearly not me, but it had my picture and was laminated. Despite the fact that I was now 33, it looked real!
The next day she was folding sweaters and I thanked her.
"For what?"
"For the, you know..." I looked around "the thing with my paycheck."
"Oh that?" She laughed "My brother has a drawer full, and it look him about 4 seconds. It's his job. You owe him $150."
That September, when Junior year started, word got out that I had an awesome fake ID, and suddenly people were showering me with attention and invites.
Heady stuff. Until then, I'd been a life-long stone-cold loser, and I certainly wasn't about to reject my sudden popularity over something as ridiculous as principles. I was wanted. I was needed. I was a goddamn superstar.
Every Friday afternoon in the late-eighties I'd be driven by my friend Dana's brother's best friend to Witowiak's Wine & Spirits or Trixies, or Big Jim's. I'd nervously enter, surrounded by a cloud of aquanet, pink Wet-n-Wild gloss hurriedly slathered on in the car.
Each time I knew this would be the time I'd be caught,
The clerk rang me up and asked for my ID. He looked at it, then up at me.
"Mrs. Chan?"
"Yes?" I replied, trying to sound Chinese.
At this moment, in any other place in the world, police and parents would be called, I'd be grounded for a month and Mrs. Chan would be cut in half.
"That'll be $14.99. You sure enjoy your ten cases of Old Milwaukee, five bottles of Jagermeister and three bottles of Wild Turkey!"
I bowed and turned.
"Oh, and Mrs. Chan?"
Shit.
"Yes?"
"Hurry back!"